Capitalizing Truth Defenders
That God has agents among the lawmakers is a well-known fact. He is using them to hold in check the forces of oppression that are straining at the leash. Some we know will in the final crisis hour take their stand with the people of God. Similarly, in the popular churches God has ministers who are nobly seeking to stem the rising tide of Modernism, ritualism, evolution, and related apostasies. And in the crisis hour not a few of these will likewise step out from corporate apostasy and will join the remnant people.
We cherish the friendship and aid of the champions of right in the civil world, and we utilize their influence and position. Let us similarly respect those in the religious world, Fundamentalists and others, who stand uncompromisingly for the Inspired Word, the basic doctrinal truths of the Christian faith, and genuine Christian experience in the midst of a world turning away from its God. These men are laboring to the end that these cherished truths and experiences perish not from the churches with which they are still identified.
Let us build upon the public stand that they take. Let us capitalize their loyal, Scriptural stand so far as we can. This message, while a specific warning and final entreaty to men, embraces every truth they defend. The common ground of such defenders can be used to convince our hearers of the sanity, the scholarliness, the Scripturalness. and the Christianity of our own positions.
And when the general departure from the faith becomes overwhelming, and the fundamental issues are more sharply in the forefront, many of these leaders and their people will join heart and hand in the consummation of the gospel in the final defense of the faith once delivered, and as centering in this movement. Let us build well and tactfully at the present hour.
L. E. F.
Unity in Essentials
It is so easy to be critical of divergent and unessential details. The proof reader is irked by typographical blunders in a book or an article, because of the critical and educated sense of looking for every such blunder in the professional work of everyday life. So also with the preacher. Studying doctrine and faith, method and delivery, the preacher is by cultivated instinct a critical hearer. A regrettable slip of speech, an odd mannerism, an unfortunate minor deviation in theology—and a great truth may be lost upon the mind of the hearer. The same is true of the books and articles we read.
Unfortunately there is a profound streak of unenviable egotism in most of us, so that we mentally compare and judge the correctness and propriety of the thoughts of others by our own viewpoints. It is a good thing to remember that others are annoyed by our quirks and idiosyncrasies, and that other preachers will probably take exception to some of the details of every presentation that we might make. Let us resolutely put aside pettiness. Let us look for the big things, the real essentials. Let us pass over the inconsequential variations, and cling sympathetically together in the great essentials.
L. E. F.
The Call of the Hour
With all the pomp and fanfare of a major papal function, and heralded with all the publicity afforded by unparalleled press facilities, the Roman Pontiff recently spoke to the world in the most extensive broadcast in history to date. It was an epochal event. Verily, all the world is wondering, and is worshipful in rapidly increasing degree.
The episode constitutes another link in the rapidly forming chain of evidence that we stand upon the threshold of final events. The sobering facts fairly stagger the mind. Yet we seem to take them so calmly. The fundamental prophetic facts we have believed and preached are present actualities. The evidence is undeniable, but the facts do not grip as they should. As a ministry, dare we say that we are living and preaching as if Christ were even at the door; as if the teeming multitudes that throng us will be lost if they do not accept Him and the provisions of His last message to men?
We have not followed cunningly devised fables. Rehearse the converging signs of Christ's imminent return; review the focusing cardinal prophecies; check off the wavmarks of the centuries. Let the full cumulative weight of the evidence fall upon the heart. It is our solemn conviction that we are nearer the end of our work than many think. The close of probation is stealing suddenly and unexpectedly upon us. Our day of opportunity and service will end before we are aware.
What should be the effect of these sobering facts upon us? They should lead.
First. to an utter abandonment to God and His service. This is foundational. God can fill only empty vessels. He can chsre only yielded instruments with His rower.
Second. to a holy passion for souls. A quenchless love for lost men and women lies at the heart of all effective results.
Third, to an application of our message so that our responsive hearers shall be transformed by the regenerating, saving power of God, using the threefold message as its medium and setting, blending doctrinal standfastness with sound Christian experience.
Fourth, to a consummating emphasis upon the third angel's message. We are throwing much of our emphasis on the provisions centering about the first angel's message, which of course is to unite with the call of the second angel for withdrawal from the popular churches of the world. We have both an announcement and a call, a warning and a provision. All this is but the application and expansion of the everlasting gospel. The threefold message must be given in its fullness. It must include and should be built upon the offer of an experimental salvation that will not only win initially to God, but will keep the soul when there is no longer an Intercessor for man in the heavenly sanctuary. Sin must vanish from the exnerience of the saved.
Such are some of the manifest lessons of the hour. May God open our eyes and -our hearts to its summons.
L. E. F.
The Use of Authorities
As Seventh-day Adventists, we are justly resentful of attacks by enemies upon our cherished doctrines when based upon garbled quotations from our recognized literature, or when built upon true expressions removed from the context, thereby giving a perverted meaning. And especially do we resent the use of statements made by apostates. Such a perverted use of authorities is unscholarly, unfair, and un-Christian.
But let us learn a needed lesson therefrom. In our dealings with the Papacy, or with apostate Protestant denominations and sects, whether it be a matter of history or doctrine, let us be scrupulously careful to be fair as well as faithful, just as well as aggressive, and Christian as well as courageous. Truth must be both accurate and fair if it be true to its name and obligations. Its heralds must disdain any distortion of fact, any subterfuge or looseness. The use of garbled or untrustworthy quotations may pass unchallenged for a time, but will ultimately be exposed and overthrown; and the reaction and revulsion therefrom upon a sensitive, high-minded soul cannot be estimated, to say nothing of the reflex action upon the mind and conscience of one who knowingly uses them. Carelessness here is inexcusable. It is our business to know. Scholarship and Christian ethics demand it. Our denominational purpose is the establishment of all truth and the exposure and overthrow of all error. This can only be accomplished by undeviating fidelity to fact.
The false religions of the historic past were basically wrong, and not only is Catholicism apostate, but present-day Protestantism has departed from God. Let us possess the true facts, and in faithfully exposing perverting doctrines use only unimpeachable, acknowledged, and honorable evidence, with such fairness as to preclude all just charges of perversion. Unfortunately, there are many quotations current that are no more fair and honorable than the perverted excerpts from our own denominational literature which are often used against us. Let us be doubly careful here, and maintain the enviable reputation for exacting dependability. Truth not only can afford to be fair; it cannot afford to be unfair.
L. E. F.
